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[Slizeezyc]

isn't he an anti-vaxxer?

Not sure about the vax stance, but he was anti-GMO for sure I believe, though I think that just had more to do with hating Monsanto to the core more than anything -- but could be wrong there.

 

[Spiritreaver]

Omg Joy Reid that was amazing.

Yea, I wish more anchors were doing this. They let too much bullshit through by letting people evade. Joy did a great job.

It's your show, doesn't let them step on your toes or talk over you. I would cut off mics, but this is probably why I am not on the news.

 

[Trouble]

Omg Joy Reid that was amazing.

They need to fire Lawrence O'Donnell and give Joy his time slot.

 

[benjipwns]

PoliGAF fam, has there ever been an analysis or discussion on why the alt-right (see: other word for not-okay views) is so prominent versus an alt-left?

There was some Bernie Bros stuff on the left, but there's not like "stars" of the movement really in the same way. Is there a true alt-left that does all this insane stuff and I'm just not aware? A Breitbart and Drudge of the left that is popular and at least profitable enough? An Alex Jones? A Rush? A Hannity?

In short, why is the alt-right so dominant versus an alt-left beyond the obvious hate aspects (if any)?

There is no alt-right. I mean, define it. And we can probably grab it from the past under a different name. Except it now uses the internet.

Breitbart, Drudge, Rush, Hannity, Alex Jones, none of these are "alt-right" (well...okay, Brietbart has embraced it, but it wasn't that when he was alive) in a way that's shareable. They all predated the term for one.

-Breitbart believed that the "tactics of the left" should be used against it.
-Drudge is a gay pro-life libertarian who used to link to news stories with tweaked headlines that he now pays someone else to do so. And he used to get leaks.
-Rush is a regular conservative who has become more of a "protect the GOP FIRST" type as he's aged. (Hiding his more socially liberal views in the process.)
-Hannity is a lockstep GOP robot who I don't think anyone actually likes but nobody ever says "you know, I hate Sean" so everyone pretends to be nice to him out of pity.
-Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist first, coherent ideology never.

Self-proclaimed alt-rightists like Milo don't define in a way where it means anything distinctive.

He writes in his primer:

The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright.

The origins of the alternative right can be found in thinkers as diverse as Oswald Spengler, H.L Mencken, Julius Evola, Sam Francis, and the paleoconservative movement that rallied around the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan. The French New Right also serve as a source of inspiration for many leaders of the alt-right.

The media empire of the modern-day alternative right coalesced around Richard Spencer during his editorship of Taki’s Magazine. In 2010, Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com, which would become a center of alt-right thought.

Alongside other nodes like Steve Sailer’s blog, VDARE and American Renaissance, AlternativeRight.com became a gathering point for an eclectic mix of renegades who objected to the established political consensus in some form or another.

he so-called online “manosphere,” the nemeses of left-wing feminism, quickly became one of the alt-right’s most distinctive constituencies. Gay masculinist author Jack Donovan, who edited AlternativeRight’s gender articles, was an early advocate for incorporating masculinist principles in the alt-right. His book, The Way Of Men, contains many a wistful quote about the loss of manliness that accompanies modern, globalized societies.

It’s tragic to think that heroic man’s great destiny is to become economic man, that men will be reduced to craven creatures who crawl across the globe competing for money, who spend their nights dreaming up new ways to swindle each other. That’s the path we’re on now.

Steve Sailer, meanwhile, helped spark the “human biodiversity” movement, a group of bloggers and researchers who strode eagerly into the minefield of scientific race differences — in a much less measured tone than former New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade.

Isolationists, pro-Russians and ex-Ron Paul supporters frustrated with continued neoconservative domination of the Republican party were also drawn to the alt-right, who are almost as likely as the anti-war left to object to overseas entanglements.

Elsewhere on the internet, another fearsomely intelligent group of thinkers prepared to assault the secular religions of the establishment: the neoreactionaries, also known as #NRx.

Neoreactionaries appeared quite by accident, growing from debates on LessWrong.com, a community blog set up by Silicon Valley machine intelligence researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky. The purpose of the blog was to explore ways to apply the latest research on cognitive science to overcome human bias, including bias in political thought and philosophy.

LessWrong urged its community members to think like machines rather than humans. Contributors were encouraged to strip away self-censorship, concern for one’s social standing, concern for other people’s feelings, and any other inhibitors to rational thought. It’s not hard to see how a group of heretical, piety-destroying thinkers emerged from this environment — nor how their rational approach might clash with the feelings-first mentality of much contemporary journalism and even academic writing.

Led by philosopher Nick Land and computer scientist Curtis Yarvin, this group began a gleeful demolition of the age-old biases of western political discourse. Liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism were all put under the microscope of the neoreactionaries, who found them wanting.

Liberal democracy, they argued, had no better a historical track record than monarchy, while egalitarianism flew in the face of every piece of research on hereditary intelligence. Asking people to see each other as human beings rather than members of a demographic in-group, meanwhile, ignored every piece of research on tribal psychology.

While they can certainly be accused of being overly-eager to bridge the gap between fact and value (the truth of tribal psychology doesn’t necessarily mean we should embrace or encourage it), these were the first shoots of a new conservative ideology — one that many were waiting for.

Understand? No, of course not, because this is literal gibberish. The only thing holding the group together is a "conservatism" based around the fear of white males being displaced.

We had this. It existed in the 1800s. Black codes and Jim Crow laws were in part reactions to fear that newly freedmen would undermine the status of all whites. Womens liberation has always faced this same fear but with males.

Milo eventually, some thousand words later, gets around to this:

The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting.

Needless to say, natural conservatives’ concern with the flourishing of their own culture comes up against an intractable nemesis in the regressive left, which is currently intent on tearing down statues of Cecil Rhodes and Queen Victoria in the UK, and erasing the name of Woodrow Wilson from Princeton in the U.S. These attempts to scrub western history of its great figures are particularly galling to the alt-right, who in addition to the preservation of western culture, care deeply about heroes and heroic virtues.

This follows decades in which left-wingers on campus sought to remove the study of “dead white males” from the focus of western history and literature curricula. An establishment conservative might be mildly irked by such behaviour as they switch between the State of the Union and the business channels, but to a natural conservative, such cultural vandalism may just be their highest priority.

In fairness, many establishment conservatives aren’t keen on this stuff either — but the alt-right would argue that they’re too afraid of being called “racist” to seriously fight against it. Which is why they haven’t. Certainly, the rise of Donald Trump, perhaps the first truly cultural candidate for President since Buchanan, suggests grassroots appetite for more robust protection of the western European and American way of life.

Alt-righters describe establishment conservatives who care more about the free market than preserving western culture, and who are happy to endanger the latter with mass immigration where it serves the purposes of big business, as “cuckservatives.”

Halting, or drastically slowing, immigration is a major priority for the alt-right. While eschewing bigotry on a personal level, the movement is frightened by the prospect of demographic displacement represented by immigration.

The alt-right do not hold a utopian view of the human condition: just as they are inclined to prioritise the interests of their tribe, they recognise that other groups – Mexicans, African-Americans or Muslims – are likely to do the same. As communities become comprised of different peoples, the culture and politics of those communities become an expression of their constituent peoples.

You’ll often encounter doomsday rhetoric in alt-right online communities: that’s because many of them instinctively feel that once large enough and ethnically distinct enough groups are brought together, they will inevitably come to blows. In short, they doubt that full “integration” is ever possible. If it is, it won’t be successful in the “kumbaya” sense. Border walls are a much safer option.

The alt-right’s intellectuals would also argue that culture is inseparable from race. The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved. A Mosque next to an English street full of houses bearing the flag of St. George, according to alt-righters, is neither an English street nor a Muslim street — separation is necessary for distinctiveness.

Some alt-righters make a more subtle argument. They say that when different groups are brought together, the common culture starts to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Instead of mosques or English houses, you get atheism and stucco.

Ironically, it’s a position that has much in common with leftist opposition to so-called “cultural appropriation,” a similarity openly acknowledged by the alt-right.

Again, this isn't new. Or even uniquely American. LePen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, etc.

And then Milo claims that it represents a subversive culture because it uses popular internet memes to offend the squares, which is somewhat contradictory but we'll stay with him:

These young rebels, a subset of the alt-right, aren’t drawn to it because of an intellectual awakening, or because they’re instinctively conservative. Ironically, they’re drawn to the alt-right for the same reason that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s: because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don’t understand.

Just as the kids of the 60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll, so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide. These caricatures are often spliced together with Millennial pop culture references, from old 4chan memes like pepe the frog, to anime and My Little Pony references.

Are they actually bigots? No more than death metal devotees in the 80s were actually Satanists. For them, it’s simply a means to fluster their grandparents. Currently, the Grandfather-in-Chief is Republican consultant Rick Wilson, who attracted the attention of this group on Twitter after attacking them as “childless single men who jerk off to anime.”

Responding in kind, they proceeded to unleash all the weapons of mass trolling that anonymous subcultures are notorious for — and brilliant at. From digging up the most embarrassing parts of his family’s internet history to ordering unwanted pizzas to his house and bombarding his feed with anime and Nazi propaganda, the alt-right’s meme team, in typically juvenile but undeniably hysterical fashion, revealed their true motivations: not racism, the restoration of monarchy or traditional gender roles, but lulz.

Young people perhaps aren’t primarily attracted to the alt-right because they’re instinctively drawn to its ideology: they’re drawn to it because it seems fresh, daring and funny, while the doctrines of their parents and grandparents seem unexciting, overly-controlling and overly-serious. Of course, there is plenty of overlap. Some true believers like to meme too.

If you’re a Buzzfeed writer or a Commentary editor reading this and thinking… how childish, well. You only have yourself to blame for pompously stomping on free expression and giving in to the worst and most authoritarian instincts of the progressive left. This new outburst of creativity and taboo-shattering is the result.

While the alt-right is too sophisticated to be mistaken for a mindless knee-jerk reaction, opposition to this prevailing consensus is the glue that holds it together. Some enjoy violating social norms for shock value, while others take a more intellectual approach, but all oppose the pieties and hypocrisies of the current consensus — from both Left and Right — in some form or another.

The ideology isn't new. Far from it.

The behavior isn't new, especially considering the internet.

We can accept it's "Right" under traditional definitions of "Left" and "Right" but what makes it "Alt"?

Read all of this, all their manifestos and it's basically this: they like upsetting people who disagree.

That's why I say there's no alt-right. It's smearing new feces on well worn Western cultural nativism (with some mens rights stuff added in) because the feces will extra upset you lieberal social studies warrior squares.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Who was Joy Reid interviewing?

 

[Makai]

The alt right is people who like memes

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

This CNN panel on Cooper is getting crazy. Wigs were being snatched.

 

[Balphon]

Why do people dislike Bill Maher? Because he isn't afraid to name Islam (and religion in general) as a major contributor to human rights abuses and terrorism around the world? Yeah, he can be a bit of an ass at times, but he's generally very consistent in his views and isn't a bullshit monger like his right wing equivalents (which is why he doesn't really have any). Dude is a national treasure in my opinion and should be celebrated by liberals.

I just tend to tune out whenever someone rails on religion as categorically as he does.

 

[benjipwns]

Why do people dislike Bill Maher? Because he isn't afraid to name Islam (and religion in general) as a major contributor to human rights abuses and terrorism around the world? Yeah, he can be a bit of an ass at times, but he's generally very consistent in his views and isn't a bullshit monger like his right wing equivalents (which is why he doesn't really have any). Dude is a national treasure in my opinion and should be celebrated by liberals.

Because Real Time sucks..

Bring back Politically Incorrects format!

Combine Marilyn Manson, Mrs. Brady, G. Gordon Liddy and some absolute nutjob woman in an organic round table where Bill mainly serves to direct traffic rather than use it as his personal platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tco6_-yP40

 

[Syncytia]

The alt right is people who like memes

Says who?

 

[Makai]

Says who?

Pepe frog

 

[Slizeezyc]

Because Real Time sucks..

Bring back Politically Incorrects format!

Combine Marilyn Manson, Mrs. Brady, G. Gordon Liddy and some absolute nutjob woman in an organic round table where Bill mainly serves to direct traffic rather than use it as his personal platform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tco6_-yP40

Ha, yes! This guy gets it.

 

[Syncytia]

Pepe frog

oh shit waddup

 

[Rebel Leader]

Pepe frog

Which pepe frog?

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

At the NPR Politics taping, we can submit questions. What should I ask?

 

[Thequietone]

Okay, I feel foolish for even asking this here, but since the Trump supporter got himself banned in that thread on off topic, and I don't want to derail that thread or risk a Google search. Where does this talking point that Hillary is pro pedophiles come from? I assume something they pulled out of their ass?

 

[Crisco]

isn't he an anti-vaxxer?

Probably his most regrettable view, but hey, no one's perfect. Also, I think it comes from a legitimate distrust of pharmaceutical companies than not believing in science.

 

[Spiritreaver]

Who was Joy Reid interviewing?

Jack Kingston.

 

[Slizeezyc]

Okay, I feel foolish for even asking this here, but since the Trump supporter got himself banned in that thread on off topic, and I don't want to derail that thread or risk a Google search. Where does this talking point that Hillary is pro pedephiles come from? I assume something they pulled out of their ass?

Man, I missed this thread I guess.

 

[Rebel Leader]

At the NPR Politics taping, we can submit questions. What should I ask?

Why does Donald trump when saying he regrets something have to read it from a prompter? Why does he have to be told what to say?

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

 

[Resident_UA]

Why do people dislike Bill Maher? Because he isn't afraid to name Islam (and religion in general) as a major contributor to human rights abuses and terrorism around the world? Yeah, he can be a bit of an ass at times, but he's generally very consistent in his views and isn't a bullshit monger like his right wing equivalents (which is why he doesn't really have any). Dude is a national treasure in my opinion and should be celebrated by liberals.

I actually stop watching his show because of this bullshit. And before you say that there's no harm in "telling like it is" you need to remember that the next logical step of what Maher is saying is what Trump is proposing. There's nothing wrong with criticizing religion, but Maher just like Trump forgets to separate religion from a group of people that follow that religion.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Okay, I feel foolish for even asking this here, but since the Trump supporter got himself banned in that thread on off topic, and I don't want to derail that thread or risk a Google search. Where does this talking point that Hillary is pro pedephiles come from? I assume something they pulled out of their ass?

She was a public defender at one point and defended someone accused of of child molestation or something.

Then she was asked about the case, and talked about how they made the dude take a polygraph test, even though everyone knew they were bullshit and couldn't be used, but the dude passed anyways (he pleaded guilty).

Point being, she was laughing about how stupid lie detector tests are, and anyone who hates her now say she was laughing because she got a pedo off or something.

Why do people dislike Bill Maher? Because he isn't afraid to name Islam (and religion in general) as a major contributor to human rights abuses and terrorism around the world? Yeah, he can be a bit of an ass at times, but he's generally very consistent in his views and isn't a bullshit monger like his right wing equivalents (which is why he doesn't really have any). Dude is a national treasure in my opinion and should be celebrated by liberals.

Bigot
Anti-GMO idiot
Thinks vaccines are a government conspiracy

a true liberal hero

he also sucks at being funny

 

[benjipwns]

Okay, I feel foolish for even asking this here, but since the Trump supporter got himself banned in that thread on off topic, and I don't want to derail that thread or risk a Google search. Where does this talking point that Hillary is pro pedephiles come from? I assume something they pulled out of their ass?

https://www.intellihub.com/video-hillary-clinton-brags-getting-pedophile-off-hook/

Video: Hillary Clinton brags about getting a pedophile off the hook

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...on-took-me-through-hell-rape-victim-says.html

Exclusive: ‘Hillary Clinton Took Me Through Hell,’ Rape Victim Says

 

[BlastProcessing]

Probably his most regrettable view, but hey, no one's perfect. Also, I think it comes from a legitimate distrust of pharmaceutical companies than not believing in science.

It comes from a distrust of pharmaceutical companies and not believing in science. Maher represents the worst of American punditry to me. He never misses a chance to punch down or go low. He his main motivation seems to be to transmit smugness and anger to his audience.

He is mean spirited and small.

 

[Makai]

Which pepe frog?

 

[StoOgE]

Trump is coming to Austin on Tuesday.

Not just Austin, the Travis county expo center which is in a decidedly POC part of town.

He's made a terrible mistake.

 

[The Technomancer]

Why do people dislike Bill Maher? Because he isn't afraid to name Islam (and religion in general) as a major contributor to human rights abuses and terrorism around the world? Yeah, he can be a bit of an ass at times, but he's generally very consistent in his views and isn't a bullshit monger like his right wing equivalents (which is why he doesn't really have any). Dude is a national treasure in my opinion and should be celebrated by liberals.

Criticism of Islam is fine. I certainly have a fair number of my own. But when that edges over into "refugees are incompatible with Western culture" it starts to look a bit nastier. As someone who lived for five years in the US city with the largest Somali Muslim population, in which I literally saw or interacted with a half dozen Muslims daily on the bus or at restaurants or stores, it just doesn't gel with my actual experience and sounds like some combination of racism and prejudice.

 

[Thequietone]

Man, I missed this thread I guess.

It's the thread about the Indian American Trump supporter getting thrown out of the Trump rally because he "looked like a known protester". I recognized all of the other talking points besides the pro pedephiles stance thrown out by the now banned Trump supporter.



Edit: I see. I should have known it was about that case but didn't know it was child molestation. Thanks for the answers/replies.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Trump is coming to Austin on Tuesday.

Not just Austin, the Travis county expo center which is in a decidedly POC part of town.

He's made a terrible mistake.

Oh god, I am staying home that day.

 

[Oblivion]

benji's totally right. There's very little difference between Breitbart and Fox News on a substantive level.

 

[Dominican Power]

She was a public defender at one point and defended someone accused of of child molestation or something.

Then she was asked about the case, and talked about how they made the dude take a polygraph test, even though everyone knew they were bullshit and couldn't be used, but the dude passed anyways (he pleaded guilty).

Point being, she was laughing about how stupid lie detector tests are, and anyone who hates her now say she was laughing because she got a pedo off or something.



Bigot
Anti-GMO idiot
Thinks vaccines are a government conspiracy

a true liberal hero

he also sucks at being funny

I love it when he shits on Republicans and Christians.

 

[benjipwns]

The format hurts Bill Maher, he was funnier on PI because he was making jokes within the flow of the conversation. He would often sit back and watch as things got going. Or hop on something somebody said for a joke, and then let the conversation go back.

Real Time has too much of Maher tossing out something to his guests then trying to work with their response. Or going on an extended dissertation and then throwing it to the guests for praise. He keeps a more rigid schedule because he wants to do all the segments and bits and so on. The panelists are aligned so they talk TO Maher instead of each other so crosstalk can be difficult. Even when the guests disagree they go through Maher. And there's a whole bunch of sucking up to Maher because he's at the center of every interaction.

 

[Boke1879]

Trump is coming to Austin on Tuesday.

Not just Austin, the Travis county expo center which is in a decidedly POC part of town.

He's made a terrible mistake.

I really want to see how this plays out.

 

[pigeon]

There is no alt-right. I mean, define it. And we can probably grab it from the past under a different name. Except it now uses the internet.

See, this post is why benji is great even though most of the time he's trolling and he doesn't even bother to argue about the fundamental legitimacy of the state any more.

I think this is more or less accurate. The term "alt-right" only exists because some people noticed a bunch of super racist and sexist people coming out of 4chan and "crazy reactionaries who organize on anime pornography message boards" sounded too dumb to do hot takes on.

If you want to talk about the alt-left you need to define what you think the distinctive characteristics of an "alt" political group is first. (If you asked me, I'd say the closest we got to an alt-left is Occupy Wall Street, especially near the end when all the democratic meetings got taken over by meth addicts.)

But ultimately like fifty years ago the "alt-right" was just "the right." The only reason they're the alt-right now is that they lost the culture war and their beliefs are no longer considered socially acceptable.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Bigot
Anti-GMO idiot
Thinks vaccines are a government conspiracy

a true liberal hero

he also sucks at being funny

Holy crap!! Ben Affleck posts on GAF???

 

[theultimo]

Criticism of Islam is fine. I certainly have a fair number of my own. But when that edges over into "refugees are incompatible with Western culture" it starts to look a bit nastier. As someone who lived for five years in the US city with the largest Somali Muslim population, in which I literally saw or interacted with a half dozen Muslims daily on the bus or at restaurants or stores, it just doesn't gel with my actual experience and sounds like some combination of racism and prejudice.

My apt complex is a huge diversity of somali and other minorities. You must be in the twin cities, as i agree with everything you said.

 

[Oblivion]

The format hurts Bill Maher, he was funnier on PI because he was making jokes within the flow of the conversation. He would often sit back and watch as things got going. Or hop on something somebody said for a joke, and then let the conversation go back.

Real Time has too much of Maher tossing out something to his guests then trying to work with their response. Or going on an extended dissertation and then throwing it to the guests for praise. He keeps a more rigid schedule because he wants to do all the segments and bits and so on. The panelists are aligned so they talk TO Maher instead of each other so crosstalk can be difficult. Even when the guests disagree they go through Maher. And there's a whole bunch of sucking up to Maher because he's at the center of every interaction.

On the other hand....Real Time has an infinitely better theme song.

 

[Piecake]

Probably his most regrettable view, but hey, no one's perfect. Also, I think it comes from a legitimate distrust of pharmaceutical companies than not believing in science.

He is an anti-vaxxer and anti-GMO. On those positions, he is against science. Someone can put lipstick on a pig all they want, but what it all boils down to is that his distrust is more important in forming his opinion than science, and that is not legitimate distrust. That is conspiratorial nutbaggery.

If you are going to have strong opinions and be rather arrogant about them, then all of your opinions better be defensible when you are called out. His aren't, so he is going to get some shit.

 

[Crisco]

I actually stop watching his show because of this bullshit. And before you say that there's no harm in "telling like it is" you need to remember that the next logical step of what Maher is saying is what Trump is proposing. There's nothing wrong with criticizing religion, but Maher just like Trump forgets to separate religion from a group of people that follow that religion.

So we should just ignore that the vast majority of muslims worldwide favor laws that oppress women and punish apostasy with violence? These are legitimate issues that lead to the rise of groups like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and yes, ISIS. Pretending they don't exist is just as ignorant as the views held by Trump supporters.

He is an anti-vaxxer and anti-GMO. On those positions, he is against science. Someone can put lipstick on a pig all they want, but what it all boils down to is that his distrust is more important in forming his opinion than science, and that is not legitimate distrust. That is conspiratorial nutbaggery.

If you are going to have strong opinions and be rather arrogant about them, then all of your opinions better be defensible when you are called out. His aren't, so he is going to get some shit.

That's fine, and I'm not saying liberals should hang on his every word like gospel. But more often than that, he speaks the truth, especially when it comes to Republicans and conservative "ideas" in general.

 

[Geg]

With Trump going to unconventional places for the general election campaign like Jackson, MS and Louisiana, I'm worried about him possibly coming to my city now

 

[The Technomancer]

My apt complex is a huge diversity of somali and other minorities. You must be in the twin cities, as i agree with everything you said.

Yeah, I'm talking about my time in Minneapolis. Hell, at the University campus I saw more black girls wearing headscarves than were not. Didn't exactly seem like women were being denied access to higher education or anything

 

[Spoiled Milk]

The only reason they're the alt-right now is that they lost the culture war and their beliefs are no longer considered socially acceptable.

I agree with your whole post except for this one sentence. Most of the stuff they say is still socially acceptable among conservatives who make up a huge chunk of the population.

 

[The Technomancer]

So we should just ignore that the vast majority of muslims worldwide favor laws that oppress women and punish apostasy with violence? These are legitimate issues that lead to the rise of groups like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and yes, ISIS. Pretending they don't exist is just as ignorant as the views held by Trump supporters.

Who wants to ignore them? What people push back against is when those things are used as justifications for various flavors of jingoism and, as Maher has a record of doing, skepticism of things like accepting refugees from war zones.

This idea gets thrown around a lot that there's a certain class of liberal who's soft on Islam in the name of "tolerance", but I don't actually see very much of that, if any. What I do see is people who refuse to allow criticism of Islam to spill over into bigotry. And yes, I think Maher has crossed that line on multiple occasions. Others use criticism of Islam as justification for military action, or as justification for dangerous domestic policies. Hell, Trump is the extreme example of this, his anti-Islam rhetoric is founded just as much on "how they treat their women" as it is on terrorism

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

Holy crap!! Ben Affleck posts on GAF???

i saw that interview/thing

I talk and get angry just like him!

 

[Spoiled Milk]

Who wants to ignore them? What people push back against is when those things are used as justifications for various flavors of jingoism and, as Maher has a record of doing, skepticism of things like accepting refugees from war zones.

This idea gets thrown around a lot that there's a certain class of liberal who's soft on Islam in the name of "tolerance", but I don't actually see very much of that, if any. What I do see is people who refuse to allow criticism of Islam to spill over into bigotry. And yes, I think Maher has crossed that line on multiple occasions. Others use criticism of Islam as justification for military action, or as justification for dangerous domestic policies. Hell, Trump is the extreme example of this, his anti-Islam rhetoric is founded just as much on "how they treat their women" as it is on terrorism

Ding ding! The liberal philosophy is consistent because it promotes the constructive empowerment and freedom of the individual. One can demand that women be treated equally and also reject the notion of banning all Muslim practice from the United States.

 

[sc0la]

Why does Donald trump when saying he regrets something have to read it from a prompter? Why does he have to be told what to say?

No.
"Specifically what statements do you regret? Calling Mexicans "rapists"? Belittling the heroism of POWs like Senator McCain? Saying that a Gold Star family sacrificed nothing or were Taliban sympathizers? Or was it that a debate moderator must have been on her period because

 

[BlastProcessing]

So we should just ignore that the vast majority of muslims worldwide favor laws that oppress women and punish apostasy with violence? These are legitimate issues that lead to the rise of groups like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and yes, ISIS. Pretending they don't exist is just as ignorant as the views held by Trump supporters.

There is actually room on the spectrum between Ignore and Vomit Hate on.

 

[Crisco]

Who wants to ignore them? What people push back against is when those things are used as justifications for various flavors of jingoism and, as Maher has a record of doing, skepticism of things like accepting refugees from war zones.

This idea gets thrown around a lot that there's a certain class of liberal who's soft on Islam in the name of "tolerance", but I don't actually see very much of that, if any. What I do see is people who refuse to allow criticism of Islam to spill over into bigotry. And yes, I think Maher has crossed that line on multiple occasions. Others use criticism of Islam as justification for military action, or as justification for dangerous domestic policies. Hell, Trump is the extreme example of this, his anti-Islam rhetoric is founded just as much on "how they treat their women" as it is on terrorism

What exactly has he said that you disagree with? That Muslim refugees from parts of the Middle East where Sharia Law is extremely popular probably won't fit in with European liberal culture too well? He's absolutely right about that. I don't he's ever said we should stop accepting them, just that we shouldn't expect there to be no problems.

 

[benjipwns]

Let's just all agree to make Joe Therrien the "alt-left" representative because it's the greatest story that came out of OWS and contains the greatest sentence ever published: https://www.thenation.com/article/audacity-occupy-wall-street/

 A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”

But then in these grim times, something unexpected happened: at first scores met in parks around New York City this summer to plan an occupation of Wall Street, then hundreds responded to their call, then thousands from persuasions familiar and astonishing, and now more than 100 cities around the country are Occupied. In the face of unchecked capitalism and a broken, captured state, the citizens of Occupy America have done something desperate and audacious—they put their faith and hope in the last seemingly credible force left in the world: each other.

Sometime during the second week of the Occupation, Joe took that leap. Within his first hour at Liberty Park, he was “totally won over by the Occupation’s spirit of cooperation and selflessness.” He has been going back just about every day since. It took him a few days to find the Arts and Culture working group, which has its roots in the first planning meetings and has already produced a museum’s worth of posters (from the crudely handmade to slicker culture-jamming twists on corporate designs), poetry readings, performance-art happenings, political yoga classes and Situationist spectacles like the one in which an artist dressed in a suit and noose tie rolled up to the New York Stock Exchange in a giant clear plastic bubble to mock the speculative economy’s inevitable pop.

Alexandre Carvalho, a Brazilian doctor who worked in Rio’s favelas and was one of the original organizers of Arts and Culture, explains that the group’s praxis revolves around two principles. “First—autonomy, horizontalism and collectivism. We’re nonhierarchical, self-regulating, self-deliberating and self-organizing. Everyone is creating their own stuff, but we’re connected to a larger hub through the Arts and Culture group.” The second principle is something Alexandre calls “virgeo,” a mashup of “virtual” and “geographical.” “We try to have both an on-the-ground conversation and an online conversation so that people all over the world can send their ideas and respond to our work.”

At one of Arts and Culture’s meetings—held adjacent to 60 Wall Street, at a quieter public-private indoor park that’s also the atrium of Deutsche Bank—it dawned on Joe: “I have to build as many giant puppets as I can to help this thing out—people love puppets!” And so Occupy Wall Street’s Puppet Guild, one of about a dozen guilds under the Arts and Culture working group, was born. In the spirit of OWS, Joe works in loose and rolling collaboration with others who share his passion for puppetry or whose projects somehow momentarily coincide with his mission. With the help of a handful of people, he built the twelve-foot Statue of Liberty puppet that had young and old alike flocking to him on October 8 in Washington Square Park. Right now, he’s working with nearly thirty artists to stage Occupy Halloween, when his newest creations, a twelve-foot Wall Street bull and a forty-foot Occupied Brooklyn Bridge inspired by Chinese paper dragons—along with a troupe of dancers playing corporate vampires

When I ask Joe if he thinks Occupy Wall Street should make repealing budget cuts like the ones that struck New York’s public schools a priority, he replies that the thought hadn’t really crossed his mind. “I hope there are groups of people who are working on that specific issue,” he says, but for the moment he’s “prioritizing what I’m most passionate about.” Which, he explains, is “figuring out how to make theater that’s going to help open people up to this new cultural consciousness. It’s what I’m driven to do right now, so I’m following that impulse to see where it leads.”